by Hannah Ford
WHAT HE PLANS (What He Wants, Book Twenty-Two)
Hannah Ford
Contents
Copyright
Want To Be In The Know?
WHAT HE PLANS
WHAT HE PLANS
Devil In A Suit (Book One) by Ivy Carter
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Copyright © 2016 by Hannah Ford
All rights reserved.
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.
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WHAT HE PLANS
(What He Wants, Book Twenty-Two)
WHAT HE PLANS
(PLEASE NOTE: THIS EDITION OF WHAT HE PLANS CONTAINS A BONUS BOOK, DEVIL IN A SUIT BY IVY CARTER. WHAT HE PLANS IS THE LENGTH OF A NORMAL WHAT HE WANTS BOOK)
CHARLOTTE
Noah’s hand gripped mine tightly, and the screams in my throat died off as my eyes began to adjust to the darkness that was emanating from inside the house.
The figure standing in the doorway came into view, the muddy features sharpening. What had seemed like a grotesque monster just a few moments ago was, I now realized, a woman.
When I’d first seen her, I’d thought the side of her face was deformed or burned – but now I realized that she hadn’t been burned, but tattooed.
The left side of her face was completely inked in an elaborate tribal design. The pattern was swirls of dark blue and green, the details so intricate that I wondered how she could have managed to sit still long enough to get something like that put on her face. Not to mention how painful it must have been.
On the tattooed side of her face – her left side – her ears were pierced multiple times, all the way up to the cartilage. Her blond hair was pulled back in tiny braids that laid flat against her scalp, each one so tight against her skin I was sure it must have been uncomfortable.
The other side of her face – the right side -- was completely bare. No tattoo, no makeup, except for a swipe of mascara and some rosy lipstick. On this side, her blond hair fell softly to her shoulders in big curls, the kind of curls you got by using the wide barrel of a curling iron.
The ear on that side were donned with a single delicate gold hoop.
The woman looked startled by my screaming, and then her eyes landed on Noah.
I braced myself, waiting for her to tell him to get out of here, or to run and fetch Lameuix.
Instead, her blue eyes brightened and she broke into a smile, revealing straight, even white teeth. The kind of teeth that only came from having the money to pay for a great dentist.
“Noah!” she said. “Oh, my goodness, Noah!” She stepped out of the house onto the porch and wrapped her arms around Noah’s waist.
Seeing her next to him, I realized how small she was, how delicate. She wore a pair of khaki linen pants that hit just above her ankle, and a white tank top that made it clear she wasn’t wearing a bra.
Her feet were bare, her toenails on her left foot painted a dark plum color, so dark it was almost black, and the nails on her right foot painted a shell pink.
Noah towered over her as she pressed into him.
“Hello, Bia,” he said, the woman’s name sounding foreign and exotic and fitting her perfectly.
“It’s so, so good to see you.” She was pulling back from him now, but she was still holding his hands, and I could see tears shining in her eyes, the kind of tears you got when you were looking at an old friend.
Who the hell was this woman? I’d been all prepared to meet Lameuix, to come face to face with a dangerous enemy. Instead we were being greeted by a blond nymph with a tattooed face.
A nymph Noah apparently knew quite well.
One he had neglected to mention to me.
“It’s good to see you, too.” Noah dropped Bia’s hands and turned to me, his hand resting on my shoulder as he pulled me toward him. “This is Charlotte. My fiance.”
“Your…” Bia trailed off, and then she smiled in delight and clapped her hands, like a child who had just discovered she was getting a wonderful present. “That’s amazing!” She grabbed me in a hug, her tiny frame making me feel like I was going to crush her.
I met Noah’s eye over her shoulder. Who the fuck is this woman and what the fuck is going on? I telegraphed to him.
I’d expected guards and creepy things and fights and danger. Now instead, I was being embraced by some strange woman named Bia, a woman I’d never heard of, who was apparently extremely happy to see us.
Noah gave me a quick, almost imperceptible shake of his head. It was a gesture designed to tell me to trust him, to just go with it.
I felt my body go stiff as Bia pulled away from me, those same sentimental tears still shining in her eyes. Anger simmered in my body, and I bit the inside of my cheek to keep from lashing out.
Noah had obviously known this woman was going to be here, had obviously known that she was going to be happy to see him and us. Had he told her he was coming? And what did she have to do with Lameuix?
It was just another example of Noah keeping things from me, and it made me furious.
Bia shook her head as she looked at me. “She’s gorgeous, Noah,” she said, turning her attention back to him. “I’m really.. it’s just.. it’s very happy news.” She looked down at the ring on my finger and gasped. “What a beautiful ring.”
Her finger traced over the diamond, the new one Noah had just given me on the plane to replace the one I’d dropped down the sewer grate. Something about her touching it with her darkly painted nail was unsettling. I didn’t like it.
It felt like she was taking some kind of ownership of him, like she felt as if she could touch something that was his, like… I don’t know. It was reminiscent of Clementine, as if these women felt they knew Noah better than I did.
And he’d never even mentioned Bia to me.
“Thank you,” I said, pulling my hand away.
“Come in, come in,” she said, motioning the two of us inside.
The house, while imposing from the outside, was even more grand on the inside.
Everything looked custom-made and dripped of money and opulence, from the chandeliers that hung from the impossibly high ceilings, to the double staircase that wound up from the foyer. Everything was modern and sleek, and yet the architecture had a certain old-fashioned feel to it. The windows were small, even though the ceilings were high, and there were no open spaces or sliding glass doors.
We followed Bia through an archway to the right that led to the living room. Here, there were the same small windows, all of them higher toward the ceiling. The floor was polished and gleaming hardwood, the furniture cream-colored with heavy curling legs. On one side of the room was a huge fireplace, the wall across from it a floor-to-ceiling bookcase filled completely with volumes covered in red leather.
This house had been meticulously designed.
Meticulously designed to keep people out.
“Is Bentley here?” Noah asked, using Lameuix’s real name.
“Yes, he’s downstairs,” Bia said.
Downstairs. She must have meant in the basement. I remembered what Noah had said about Lameuix, about the t
hings he’d done to women. Is that where he kept them? In his basement? I stayed perfectly still and tried to listen, but I couldn’t hear anything coming from downstairs.
Not that I expected to.
If you were keeping women in the basement, locked up and chained, you certainly weren’t going to allow people to hear them.
“Would you like some tea?” Bia asked. “I was just about to have some.”
She seemed to be addressing the question to both of us, but her eyes were on me.
“Sure,” I said, not because I really wanted some, but because I had the distinct feeling it was the answer that was expected of me, from both her and Noah.
Bia led us through the living room and into a huge chef’s kitchen that looked as if it had never been used. Everything was sparkling clean, and the faint scent of cleaning supplies hung in the air. A wooden tray had been placed on the chrome countertop, and Bia crossed the room to the matching cabinets, pulled out four mugs (one for Lameuix?) and placed them on the tray.
“None for me, thank you,” Noah said.
Bia rolled her eyes. “It’s good for you.” She ignored his protests and poured four steaming mugs of tea, then crossed the room and pressed the button on an intercom that was attached to the wall.
It was identical to the intercom that was posted at the gate outside. The whole house must have been wired with them.
“Yes?” a smooth male voice asked. It was a different voice than the one that had answered when we’d first arrived.
“Baby, we have guests,” Bia said. “Come up for tea.”
“Who is it?”
“Noah Cutler. And he brought a girl.” Her voice was singsong, teasing, and she looked at me and gave me a wink.
She turned back and grabbed the tray, and Noah and I began to follow her back to the living room.
I walked slowly, knowing Noah would stay by my side.
“Noah – ” I started once Bia was far enough ahead of us that she couldn’t hear.
But Noah gave me a stern look, his expression stormy and serious. “Not now, Charlotte.”
But he was insane if he thought I was going to let it go that easily. “Tell me what the fuck is going on,” I said. “Or I won’t take another step.”
I stopped in the middle of the hallway, and Noah turned on me, anger pulsing in his eyes. “Charlotte –“ he started. But before he could say anything, Bia turned around.
“Is everything okay?” she asked. She was turned in profile, the side of her face that wasn’t tattooed the only side that was visible. She was holding a tray of tea and her voice was expectant, and for a second, it was like Noah and I really were here just to visit some old college friends of his.
My stomach turned and I tasted bile at the back of my throat.
“Everything’s fine,” Noah said, his voice smooth and friendly and reassuring. “We’ll meet you in the living room.”
“Of course,” Bia said. “I’ll go set up the tea and you can join me when you’re ready.” She turned around and slipped out of view, and my breath caught in my chest.
Everything inside of me was screaming to run, to get the hell out of here, that this was just WRONG. I swallowed the bile that had now risen into my throat.
“What is it?” Noah asked impatiently, like I was the one being crazy.
“What is it?” I repeated. “You are not seriously asking me that.”
He ran his fingers through his hair and sighed. “Look, this isn’t… I wasn’t sure what to expect when we got here.”
“Really? Because you made it pretty clear that once we got here, people weren’t going to be too excited to see us. To put it mildly. Now there’s some woman – who you’ve never mentioned, by the way – greeting us with tea and scones.”
“There are no scones, Charlotte. Please don’t exaggerate.”
My eyes got so wide I felt as if they were going to bug out of my head. “That’s your response?” I shook my head. “No. Uh-huh. We’re leaving.”
I went to move by him, but his hand reached out and gripped my arm. “No.” His voice was a low growl, his eyes locked on mine as his strong jaw twitched and set into a line. He took in a breath, his broad chest swelling with the effort, his normally impressive frame seeming even more imposing. “Charlotte,” he said, softening slightly as a look of vulnerability and longing crossing his face. “Do you want to be free of this?”
“Of you?”
“No.” Hurt flashed across his face, and it swallowed the vulnerability, until any trace of it was gone and he’d closed up again, completely shut down and in control. “Not of me. Of this.”
His eyes stayed on mine, serious and sure, until I realized what he was talking about. He was talking about this. All of it. Lameuix. Force. Lilah Parks. Professor Worthington. Jason Cartwright. Everything that had been working against us since the beginning, everything that had been standing in the way of us being normal.
Well.
As normal as one could be when her fiance had a penchant for whips and chains and punishments.
“Yes, of course,” I said. “But Noah – ”
“Then do as I say.” He turned and walked back toward the living room.I stood there watching him, his gait so sure, his shoulders pulled back, his head held high.
I wanted to be out of this situation more than anything.
I did.
And I wanted to be able to trust him.
I did trust him.
But how could I go along with whatever he was planning, not knowing what it was?
On the other hand, what choice did I have? I could freak out and demand we leave, but that would just make things worse.
These people were obviously dangerous, even if they were acting like they were happy to see us.
And if I went out of my way to act as if I was upset or to make a scene, I had a feeling they would become even more dangerous.
Now that I was here, I had no choice but to go along with it, whatever “it” was.
I comforted myself with the fact that there was probably nothing that could be more dangerous than going back to New York, where there was nothing waiting for me besides a madman, a possible murder charge and a disciplinary hearing.
The thoughts were so absurd that I almost laughed out loud.
A disciplinary hearing! I couldn’t believe I had gotten so upset about that when now I might be getting arrested for murder. Talk about putting your problems in prospective.
“Charlotte,” Noah called from the living room. “Come in here please.”
I took a deep breath, steadied my breathing, and walked into the living room.
“How do you take your tea, Charlotte?” Bia asked me.
“Black,” Noah answered for me. He was sitting in a wingback chair.
Bia accepted this, the fact that Noah had answered for me, and she began fixing my tea for me.
I accepted the cup she held out to me. It was white and heavy, the handle curved and carved with an L. I supposed it was for Lameuix, which was strange, since Bia had referred to him by his given name, Bentley. The teacup was like everything else in the apartment – heavy and expensive, yet somehow old-fashioned at the same time.
“Drink your tea, Charlotte,” Noah said when he saw me looking at it suspiciously.
Bia sat up straight, her features in a mask of confusion. “Is everything okay? Do you like the tea?”
Noah shot me a warning look.
“Oh, yes,” I lied. “Everything’s fine.” Everything was totally not fine. How was I supposed to know what Bia had done to this tea? It could be poisoned for all I knew. Noah took a sip of his, and gave me another warning look.
I tried to sniff the tea without Bia noticing.
But before I could decide if I was really going to have to take a sip, a door opened on the other side of the room, next to the fireplace. It was a strange place for a door to be, and at first I didn’t even realize it was a door, that’s how seamlessly it blended in with the white brick
wall.
The sound wasn’t masked at all – the door opened with a long, drawn out creak, and as soon as Bia heard it, she set her tea down and dropped to her knees, looking down at the floor, her back straight, but her head bowed.
A man emerged from the doorway.
His frame was impressive, maybe an inch or so shorter than Noah’s six-foot-four. He was wearing a pair of khakis and a crisp white t-shirt. He wore a navy blue button-up over the t-shirt, but it was open, and the sleeves were rolled up.
He had dark hair that curled around his forehead, lush and shot through with golden highlights, the kind of highlights that women paid hundreds of dollars for in a salon, but on this man were probably God-given.
He had a strong jaw that was freshly shaven, and a straight nose that kept him from being too pretty-boy good-looking.
Even so, he looked as if he’d just stepped off a polo court, or a rugby field, or whatever it was that those rich types played. He looked like a Kennedy.
This couldn’t have been Lameuix, the man who Noah claimed took a bad turn in college and began to torture women.
I had pictured him being shady and gross, with a belly and dirty fingernails and rotting teeth.
This man looked as if he’d stepped off the pages of a Ralph Lauren catalog.
Noah stood up.
A smile moved across Lameuix’s face, lighting up his strong features.
“Noah!” he exclaimed. “My old friend!”
He embraced Noah, and slapped him on the back.
Noah returned the gesture. “Bentley!” he said, but I knew him well enough to know that the cheerful tone in his voice was faked.
Bia remained on the floor, her eyes down.
She must have been trained to keep her eyes down on the ground when Lameuix entered the room.
“And who is this gorgeous creature?” Lameuix asked, his eyes meeting mine.
“This is Charlotte. My fiance,” Noah said.